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Just another GIS Blogs weblogMon, 13 Aug 2018 16:52:20 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.69101652GISCafe 2017 Year in Reviewhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/12/19/giscafe-2017-year-in-review/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/12/19/giscafe-2017-year-in-review/#respondTue, 19 Dec 2017 19:43:52 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=52612017 tested the resilience of geospatial technologies with many natural disasters. In reviewing the year, we take a look at products, services and technologies that moved the industry forward and responded eloquently to geospatial need.

Disaster response, weather tracking, and predictive weather analysis drove a great deal of development and put to the test those technologies in place for just such eventualities.

Other areas of interest include new developments in sensors, location and Big Data, small sats, mobile mapping and 3D models for indoor mapping, autonomous driving, and building smart cities.

Under the Weather

In an interview with URISA’s GISCorps founder Shoreh Elhami and URISA executive director Wendy Nelson, they offer a broader understanding of what GISCorps is about and how it can help with natural disasters.

Is ArcGIS Online able to generate a setting for help, i.e., website, app, or whatever resource might be needed, during a natural disaster event? And how soon might that be available to the public?

ArcGIS Online (AGO) can be used to create a variety of story maps. Those story maps as well as any AGO based web apps can be embedded in any website and very quickly. A good example of that is the web app that our volunteers embedded in Fort Bend County’s website on road closures. Another example is a story map that was built by NAPSG shortly after the disaster, our volunteers also assisted with that project.

How has the GIS relief effort for Hurricane Harvey been handled by GISCorps so far and what are the plans going forward?

26 of our volunteers have been working on mapping road closures in Fort Bend County. The information originates from County’s website, emails, and also tweets. The Web app has been helpful to residents, first responders, and the county staff. The project was lead by two of our volunteers who worked with GISCorps Core Committee members on managing the project. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) also requested the assistance of a GIS programmer to pull data from the FEMA site on an ongoing basis. The GISCorps Recruitment team selected a volunteer within 30 hours and put the volunteer in contact with CDC. We also asked our volunteers to contribute to NAPSG story map. We are currently on stand-by and ready to assist with other projects at this time, be it for Harvey or Irma.

Hurricane Harvey weather map

How do the projects for Hurricane Harvey and Katrina differ or are they the same? What are the priorities?

Quite different. For Katrina, we deployed 30 volunteers onsite, the option to assist remotely didn’t even exist. Volunteers packed up their bags, laptops, and other essentials and head over to the affected areas within a couple of days. For Harvey (and many other disasters of the past few years), we haven’t had to send anyone anywhere. Volunteers work from their home or offices and have been effective in different ways. For Katrina, the priority was to help with the rescue efforts at first (locate people under stress and report to the coast guard) and then, the recovery phase began where volunteers made 100’s of maps and conducted lots of analysis). For Harvey, crowd sourcing and information from social media have become major sources of information for developing interactive maps to first responders and other affected population.]

Tom Jeffrey, CEO of CoreLogic, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, talked about their analysis for the flooding and storm surge as a result of Hurricane Harvey.
Many news reports have pointed out that there were an enormous number of people in flood zones who did not have flood insurance. CoreLogic’s analysis shows that 52 percent of residential and commercial properties in the Houston metro are at “high” or “moderate” risk of flooding, yet are not in a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) as identified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Properties that are within SFHA zones required flood insurance if the property has a federal insured mortgage, if categorized as Extreme or Very High risk.

CoreLogic used their North Atlantic Hurricane Model to create wind and storm surge damage footprints for Hurricane Harvey using the track forecast data from the August 25, 10:00 a.m. CT advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center. The model tracks the multiple facets of hurricanes such as ocean flooding, wind and storm surge. The North Atlantic Hurricane Model analyzes the insured loss data to determine the expected loss range from the Hurricane Harvey event footprint in the model. Certified by the Florida Commission Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology (FCHLPM) since the inception of the process in 1997, the model provides a granular, up-to-date detailed risk assessment for the combined perils of hurricane winds and coastal storm surge flooding.

We can compare what Hurricane Harvey’s insured property loss estimates are with previous storms. In this model, it is projected that Harvey will result in $1-2 billion insured property damage while Celia was a stronger storm (category 4) and wreaked $3 billion worth of damage. Hurricane Ike made landfall near Houston and resulted in $11 billion worth of damage.

Hurricane Harvey was estimated to cause $1 billion and $2 billion from wind and storm surge damage. Left out of this equation are insured losses caused by additional flooding, contents and business interruption, as the flooding and rainfall is expected to last several days or weeks. 95 percent of the insurance claims are expected to be related to wind and less than 5 percent related to storm surge. At the time of the report, low exposure to Houston and other large metro areas was expected. However, while Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Corpus Christi, it went on to wreak great devastation in the city of Houston. In Houston alone, about 100,000 homes are damaged, according to Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert.

Of course these estimates were subject to change and interpretation as more data has been revealed.

A new kind of predictive weather analysis became available from Climacell, a company that adds their own proprietary analysis and weather data to what is readily available from the National Weather Service.

Rei Goffer, ClimaCell, CSO, talked about the company’s partnership with Autodesk BIM 360 announced at Autodesk University 2017.

ClimaCell is targeting the construction industry with their short-term weather prediction model. Why? “One-half the lifetime of a construction site is very weather sensitive, from the time they dig a hole for concrete, it’s a big factor on daily basis,” said Goffer. “We need to be able to plan accordingly and for each weather phenomenon. That’s why we’re addressing the construction industry.”

ClimaCell also addresses other industries. Goffer is one of three co-founders, with a background in aviation. All three co-founders come from military service where they were very affected by weather. “We knew there was a big gap in the provision of Weather data,” said Goffer.

“We are developing the world’s most accurate granular short-term prediction model,” Goffer said. “So that basically construction site managers can’t get this from any other weather app or specialized server.”

What differentiates ClimaCell from existing weather data providers?

Goffers reports:

Weather data – we have many more weather observations, at much higher quality than any other weather company.

Better models – we developed proprietary models for short-term weather prediction, that are faster and more accurate than anything previously available.

Computing power – we run our models on GPUs (Graphical Processing Units) rather than on CPU (standard processors), which gives us an edge in terms of competing time and resolution.”

“Our software can be used on the construction site, and you can see a map of the rain predicted by our engine for the next six hours down to the street level, with five minutes intervals instead of 1 hour intervals,” said Goffer. “It’s Very valuable in terms of real time operations that the construction manager needs.”

Integrated into the Autodesk solution is the ability to automatically have your construction site on ClimaCell software and automatically generate alerts that you define. “So you can say you care about a specific intensity of precipitation and you want to know if it will cross a threshold. Do tell me to send a text message or email to my team. You can take it to the next level and send instructions to people in different functions.”

Frank Braunschweig, CEO of ACTION Modulers, talked about the agreement of Bentley to acquire ACTION Modulers, leaders in environmental modeling. With these modulers, you can predict the impact of weather and rain on your city. Reality modeling can assist in putting that information together accurately and efficiently. Capabilities include:

Predictive analysis for urban drainage overflow

Flood early warning systems

Pollutant tracking

Key points of the company:

It was established in 2004

Affiliated with the University of Lisbon’s School of Engineering (Instituto Superior Technico)

Strong research and development team

Proven technology for EU projects

“There is interesting timing around the release of ACTION Moduler with all the flooding, hurricanes, etc.,” said Bentley’s Aidan Mercer. “This software is predicting being able to “optioneer” the potential of this happening, This means it can be predictive and it can model the potential of that happening, and integrate with our predictive analytic software. This is providing that environment by integrating within ContextCapture so you can capture site conditions and then integrate that into the environment.

It’s not very hard to predict what’s happening today. Where the digital aspect will come in is when the machine has the likelihood of failure or of weather or systems hit by unusual circumstances. It’s not necessarily being able to model the existing network, its being able to simulate that prediction beyond that point. You’re seeing this simulation going into the cloud so it continuously cross references itself to find those gaps.”

Golf Course

Sensors

On November 1, Velodyne announced that it is partnering with BoE Systems to integrate its VLP-16 Puck and VLP-16 Puck LITE LiDAR sensors into BoE Systems’ UAV fleet for geospatial data collection and analysis. This partnership delivers full 360° imaging of geography and equipment for a multitude of industries with a critical need for quick, safe, and accurate aerial inspections, including transportation, utilities, telecommunications/infrastructure, construction, aggregate, forestry, and agriculture.

In conjunction with BoE Systems’ proprietary hardware and software integrations, this provides digital maps with a level of detail that allows for the development of highly accurate flood models, drainage analysis, Building Information Modeling (BIM), contour mapping, and more.

Velodyne’s new Puck, VLP-16 sensor is the smallest, and most advanced product in Velodyne’s 3D LiDAR product range. Vastly more cost-effective than similarly priced sensors, and developed with mass production in mind, it retains the key features of Velodyne’s breakthroughs in LiDAR: Real-time, 360°, 3D distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements.

Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck LITE is a lighter weight version of the VLP-16 Puck for applications that demand a lower weight to meet their requirements. The Puck LITE has identical performance to the VLP-16, the only difference is the weight of 590 g vs. 830 g for the latter. No other changes have been made to the Puck LITE as it retains its patented 360° surround view to capture real-time 3D LiDAR data that includes distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements. Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck LITE is a lighter weight version of the VLP-16 Puck for applications that demand a lower weight to meet their requirements. The Puck LITE has identical performance to the VLP-16, the only difference is the weight of 590 g vs. 830 g for the latter. No other changes have been made to the Puck LITE as it retains its patented 360° surround view to capture real-time 3D LiDAR data that includes distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements.

SORA2003

Cepton Technologies, Inc.’s Head of Business Development Wei Wei and Vice President of Engineering and co-Founder Dr. Mark McCord talked about the Silicon Valley company’s growth and their latest announcement. In October, Cepton Technologies, a provider of 3D LiDAR sensing solutions for automotive, industrial and mapping applications, announced the launch of SORA 200, a lightweight 3D LiDAR sensor.

Wei Wei said that the reason for developing SORA 200 was that there was no 3D liDAR sensor delivering long-range, high-resolution and low cost mapping for ground robots or UAVs. The much sought after SORA 200 is able to produce highly efficient 3D map data at increased altitudes and velocities in various environments.

The FAA requires that drones fly at at least 400 feet above ground. The direction of UAVs is moving towards the medium to small surveyor market, where mining, agricultural and other industries want UAVs to gather data with a 200 meter range. With a frame rate of 200 frames the drone can fly higher and faster. Previous LiDAR offerings were only able to offer a range of 100 meters.

At 550 grams, SORA 200 is the lightest high-performance UAV LiDAR on the market, according to Wei Wei.

Location, Location…and Big Data

As a result of the huge amount of data generated via mobile devices, social media, sensors, and transactions, Gartner forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. This sets the stage for the need for powerful location tools for both business and government going forward.

The expansion highlights an update to Pitney Bowes flagship solution Spectrum, a new Big Data module which incorporates address, location and customer data information to create a single view of a customer; unique customized data sets that organizations can deploy to supplement existing investments in business intelligence (BI) infrastructure that are now embedded directly into the SDK. The Big Data module provides the ability to validate and cleanse customer and location-based data natively within Apache Hadoop and Spark, before applying analytics. Clients benefit from the combination of market-leading address validation, GeoEnrichment and analysis to get more value from structured and unstructured data. For example, organizations can use these location-based insights to gain a 360-degree view of property to streamline the mortgage process, and property and casualty underwriting; offer coverage mapping for real-time mobile networks; and understand customers, merchants and ATM locations.

“Customers’ experience with Big Data frameworks brought them to ask us for this type of solution,” said Joe Francica, managing director, Geospatial Industry Solutions, Digital Commerce Solutions at Pitney Bowes. “Every implementation is different and some clients run on 10-50 nodes, it depends on the architecture they want.”

In working with insurance companies, Pitney Bowes processed a lot of data extrapolated to Florida for Hurricane Harvey response; providing homes with records and developing risk profiles. Geocoding is used for attribution and GeoEnrichment. Big Data includes attributes such as property value, roof composition, wall composition etc. on the software side.

According to company materials, Pitney Bowes has partnered with several of the largest Big Data software providers, including Cloudera and Hortonworks, and certified its data quality and advanced geospatial capabilities on both Cloudera Enterprise and Hortonworks Data Platform to help bring their solution to market. In addition, the software provider has joined with Hortonworks Partnerworks in the Modern Data Solutions (MDS) partner program. These partnerships will enable clients that have invested in Big Data frameworks to add Pitney Bowes data quality and location capabilities to their data lakes and business processes.

Acquired on November 29 by Operation IceBridge during a flight to Victoria Land, this image shows an iceberg floating in Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound. NASA image

Small Sats

According to the NASA website, small spacecraft and satellites help NASA advance scientific and human exploration, reduce the cost of new space missions, and expand access to space. Through technological innovation, small satellites enable entirely new architectures for a wide range of activities in space with the potential for exponential jumps in transformative science.

We will be seeing more of these small spacecraft and satellites in the commercial industry as well. GIS as embedded technology has become ubiquitous for the construction industry and other industries that rely on geospatial information. In some cases, organizations do not see geospatial data as a separate entity, but as part of a whole of the datasets needed for the workflow. Bentley and Autodesk are examples of these providers.

Thornton Abbey Scan – GeoSLAM

Mobile Mapping and 3D Models for Indoor Mapping

An example of advancements in indoor mapping is the ZEB-REVO handheld mobile mapping device from GeoSLAM Ltd. That employs a highly robust 3D Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM) algorithm, which enables the rapid creation of a 3-dimensional model of any space.

Since it does not require a GPS signal, the ZEB-REVO is at its best in complex, enclosed, multi-level environments, without compromising on the accuracy of data collection.

The real-time upgrade option for the ZEB-REVO includes a revised datalogger capable of undertaking SLAM registration in real-time. It has its own integrated Wi-Fi, with results that can be displayed live, as they are captured, on any web browser enabled device including tablets and smartphones.

Autonomous Driving

Technology for autonomous driving such as Sanborn 3D HD Maps and the navigation technology to operate driverless cars will change the landscape of our roadways and the workforce. While autonomous driving is in its infancy, the route to making that happen is becoming shorter with more supportive third parties jumping into the industry.

The problem for Sanborn HD Mapping Technology is to reduce unattainable time and costs of autonomous car testing.

Their outcomes have been as follows:

High-precision 3D base maps

Substantial reduction in production time

3D mesh used in driving simulation tool

automotive partners visualize and analyze 3D models on the Web

Used in this endeavor are Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, Sanborn HD Mapping technology.

Smart Cities and Nations

Building entire cities is actually happening in Asia. The adoption of technologies to realize cities takes place more quickly there than anywhere else in the world. A small nation/state/city such as Singapore is well poised to take advantage of and demonstrate this exciting new technology.

Speaker chief executive of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Tan Boon Kai, gave a keynote entitled “Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation” at this year’s “Year in Infrastructure 2017” event in Singapore. He spoke about Singapore’s push towards being the “world’s first smart nation.” This involves improving the lives of citizens, creating more opportunities and building stronger communities.

Using good data, the government can carry out better measurements and improve the nation’s performance holistically. They have limited land and unlimited space, and it takes just an hour to get from the airport to the furthest point on the island. Their goal is to optimize land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore.

Developmental

optimization of state land and properties

gatekeeper for land use in Singapore

Regulatory

registration of land and property transactions

management of national land survey system

Administration of Residential Property Act

Mapping and Geospatial:

Development of geospatial technologies in support of Smart Nation

Operation of geospatial platforms within government

Building up geospatial capabilities within the public service

The mapping and geospatial workflow includes capture, model, share and manage data.

In supporting Smart Nation, Kai said they need digital transformation, to ensure interoperability, evolving from 2D to 3D and beyond.

“Having geospatial as a key component reinforces that data is fundamental as a push for developing as a small nation,” said Kai.

SLA are constantly exploring new ways of capturing and sharing data efficiently.

What do we have to do to support digital transformation? Digital transformation enables us to deliver on service making and processes, said Kai.

“Ensure interoperability, adopt open standard formats, believe in open format and smart data so data can support a wide variety of smart apps,” said Kai. “It can be stored in our database, developed once and used by many.”

2D is inadequate to represent high density development, so they must capture and create 3D datasets with a high level of detail. This is very important to allow environmental studies.

Smart Cadastre development is also a key data set of the country and processes. “All agencies use this data set,” said Kai. “Our cadastre system will in future be called Smart Cadastre, and hope it’s extended in 3D format. We hope it will improve productivity, decision making as well as do analytics.”

SIReNT GNSS Reference Stations are developed to ensure the country continually gets the best position from the system. It supports up to centimeter level positioning, navigation, and monitoring, and is an open system supporting both public and private users. “We need to constantly consider improving the integrity of this system,” said Kai.

OneMap 2.0 allows public users to download and obtain map data of Singapore, today it was upgraded from version 1. Developed inhouse, this solution is a complete open source environment, providing high quality geospatial information for all kinds of apps.

3D National Mapping is done in partnership with the water agency, public utilities, and aviation of Singapore, and for planning risk management and policy development. It involves capturing data at street level and phase 1 airborne laser scanning and imaging and phase 2, mobile laser scanning and imaging.

Terrain models and 3D mapping shown in the 3D City model for Virtual Singapore is in a virtual environment.

Massive amounts of data are collected for over 6,000 roads in Singapore. 3D models collect roads and street furniture, and support driverless vehicles of the future. Laser scanning for heritage documentation allows the country to protect their national monuments.

“We are looking at methodologies to allow us to capture models and manage underground networks to integrate above and underground 3D Map,” said Kai.

Once details get into 3D data set, it will be great, he said. Both softwares have to be compatible and share interoperability.

SLA is trying to create efficiency without manpower, as it is one of the ways to gather efficient data.

“SiRenT is our positioning system that allows us to gather data in real time,” said Kai. “How can we gather accurate real time data? We want to consolidate all the sensor data we have.”

The role of the electric utility allows SLA to monitor energy efficiency. The problem for telcos and energy companies is the need for consolidated ways to capture. Telcos in Singapore are privatized so there is an effort to get them to share their data. “We’re hoping we’ll be able to monitor consumption levels of energy and are looking at ways to harness natural forms of energy,” Kai said.

“We need better insight into indoor infrastructure and how buildings are created as indoor data is critical for us,” said Kai. “You’ll soon be able to input BIM data, to increase the level of data you have.”

“Our challenges in Singapore in many government agencies, is how do you accurately capture the next generation of utility data underground, while ensuring today’s underground data is accurate?” Kai asked. “There’s no way of verifying underground drawings are accurate unless you dig.”

They will need to do more underground modeling, said Kai. Many countries share these challenges and if we can all find a solution in common, then technologies will be created to address the issue.

If these weren’t large enough challenges, Kai said they are working on driverless vehicle development, with SiReNT precise navigation capability for driverless cars.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/12/19/giscafe-2017-year-in-review/feed/05261Utilities and Government Go “Digital” at Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2017https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/#respondThu, 19 Oct 2017 16:50:27 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5167The Bentley Year in Infrastructure conference held in Singapore October 8-12, kicked off with a Media Day on Monday, October 8th. Among the forums that were offered was one on Utilities and Government, which showcased the company’s commitment to geospatial technologies that are inherent in all of their utility and government applications.

Aidan Mercer, Bentley’s Industry Marketing Director, Architecture, Engineering, Construction, spoke about Bentley’s approach to geospatial in this way: “What we say in GIS, is we don’t talk exclusively about geospatial technology, we talk about it being embedded in our applications,” said Mercer. “We no longer try to prove spatial awareness because it’s inherent in our software. We don’t tend to have any announcements around geospatial because it’s built into our software.”

The “Going Digital” theme of the conference runs through the different industries that Bentley represents.

Some of these areas such as water and wastewater, hydraulic modeling, calibrating networks, designing treatment plants – have been predominantly digital for quite a long time.

“The perspective of the conference is to connect those overall disciplines into a common or connected data environment,” said Mercer.”That’s providing the ability for a design application, hydraulic model application or sensor network the ability to talk to one another. It involves information that would be native to a certain application and making it available for another computer system to make intelligent decisions. That’s why you have data analytics platforms to predict and describe better outcomes. From an overall perspective that continues the theme of what we might describe as connected applications. With our partnership with Microsoft and their cloud platforms, we have been rolling out these applications progressively but now we have a more comprehensive portfolio.”

The ProjectWise ConnectEdition worksharing platform for sharing data is more on the construction side of things and contains relevant information and workflows for government and geospatial.

During the Utilities and Government Forum, several case studies submitted by Be Inspired Award Finalists were referred to that brought home the real-world application of geospatial within those industries:

Aurecon for the Zillmere Substation, Brisbane, Australia

The problem outlined for Aurecon was they had a 57-year old substation which required excessive maintenance on 33 KV circuit breakers and isolaters.

What they used were

LIDAR scans for as-built 3D models of the existing equipment

Engineers in Cape Town and Brisbane collaborated via VR

Multi-discipline design model

Virtual walkthroughs with Energex

The project utilized Bentley Substation and ProjectWise.

Sofia Municipality Street Lighting Problems

DAVID Holding helped Sofia Municipality with their street light problems which involved incomplete street lighting asset and condition information. They needed to reduce maintenance costs and time to repair.

Their outcomes involved:

Comprehensive lighting inventory

Single source of information

Maintenance costs lowered

Improved customer service through more informed decisions

The software they used was Bentley OpenUtilities.

Bentley’s AssetWise users will benefit from situational intelligence through Azure-based machine learning provided in Bentley’s partnership with Microsoft. The capabilities of this technology include:

Improve consistency and standards adherence across all participating disciplines

Quickly perform highly accurate lightning protection calculations

This application is now available.

PESTECH Automation and Integration of Substation Design Work for 230 kV Project in Cambodia

Be Inspired Winners in the category: BIM Advancements in Utilities Transmission and Distribution, this project was challenged by the fact that the site is isolated, with very challenging terrain. Manual and CAD-based design was time consuming and error prone.

The outcomes involved:

3D visualization to overcome site and transportation to site challenges.

Substantial reduction in errors

Time savings of up to 70%.

For this project, Bentley Substation, ProjectWise, Navigator and MicroStation were used.

PG&E Reality Modeling in Bentley Substation

The problem for PG&E of California was that 95% of substation designs are brownfield. They needed accurate 3D models in multiple departments, and for community and government relations.

Their outcomes included:

50% reduction in time to recreate existing substation equipment in 3D

50% reduction of travel to sites

Products they used included Bentley Substation, ContextCapture, Descartes, MicroStation, and ProjectWise.

BIM for Chinese Power Generation Projects

The problem for these projects was that they were charged to meet the massive demand for power generation with innovative, sustainable solutions.

Outcomes involved:

$1.4 million USD saved by moving from 2D to 3D BIM for Wugachong Hydropower

$7.5 million USD saved for the Qiongzhong pumped Storage Power Station

Tongzhou Water Works of Beijing South-to-North Water Diversion Project

Be Inspired Award Winner in the category: BIM Advancements in Water and Wastewater Plants, this water works had to design the plant for a heavily populated area. In addition, they had to meet government requirements to improve the building efficiency, reduce construction costs, and eliminate impact on surrounding environment.

Outcomes included:

50% design work savings.

Multi-disciplinary models estimated to reduce 40% of drawing audit work and 15% of construction costs

City planners wanted to build a 3D digital city for planning, construction and city management.

Their outcomes were as follows:

Image acquisition and production of models were completed in one month.

Imagery processed in 20 days vs. previous 10 months.

200,000 USD savings.

Used were Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, and MicroStation.

Alberto Granados, VP Asia Pacific Microsoft, spoke of the Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit Corporation tapping into the power of Microsoft Azure. 80% of the population and primarily millennials expect the cloud to serve their needs and provide massive opportunity to disrupt. Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit were the Be Inspired Award Winners in the category, BIM Advancement in Rail and Transit.

“We are investing massively in Azure, and invest in 38 regions and four more will be announced,” said Granados. “We are bringing on 120,000 new Azure customers per month, 90% of Fortune 500 customers are already using Azure. We think infrastructure is unrepresented in this investment.”

Malaysia wants to improve productivity of workforce, and BIM or other tools are an imperative. Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit has the typical challenges of workforce, deadline, needing to synchronize different teams to reduce risk. It is the first metro able to demonstrate how the cloud can really provide assets without acquiring them and use them at any moment, in any size needed.

Agreements

Frank Braunschweig, CEO of ACTION Modulers, talked about the agreement of Bentley to acquire ACTION Modulers, leaders in environmental modeling. With these modulers, you can predict the impact of weather and rain on your city. Reality modeling can assist in putting that information together accurately and efficiently. Capabilities include:

Predictive analysis for urban drainage overflow

Flood early warning systems

Pollutant tracking

Key points of the company:

It was established in 2004

Affiliated with the University of Lisbon’s School of Engineering (Instituto Superior Technico)

Strong research and development team

Proven technology for EU projects

“There is interesting timing around the release of ACTION Moduler with all the flooding, hurricanes, etc.,” said Mercer. “This software is predicting being able to “optioneer” the potential of this happening, This means it can be predictive and it can model the potential of that happening, and integrate with our predictive analytic software. This is providing that environment by integrating within ContextCapture so you can capture site conditions and then integrate that into the environment.

It’s not very hard to predict what’s happening today. Where the digital aspect will come in is when the machine has the likelihood of failure or of weather or systems hit by unusual circumstances. It’s not necessarily being able to model the existing network, its being able to simulate that prediction beyond that point. You’re seeing this simulation going into the cloud so it continuously cross references itself to find those gaps.”

Sanborn 3D HD Maps for Autonomous Driving

There is an eagerness to embrace autonomous driving, but the bugs still haven’t been completely worked out. The problem for Sanborn is to reduce unattainable time and costs of autonomous car testing.

Their outcomes have been as follows:

High-precision 3D base maps

Substantial reduction in production time

3D mesh used in driving simulation tool

automotive partners visualize and analyze 3D models on the Web

Used in this endeavor are Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, Sanborn HD Mapping technology.

Siemens’ Global Head of Information Technology, Helmuth Ludwig, spoke of PLM and highlighted joint development projects with Bentley from the past to their becoming an alliance partner.

“We haven’t spent a lot on digital assets,” said Ludwig. “We need a digital twin, to be able to simulate all processes on the production side. How do you take information from users and integrate them in all the steps? What happens when there’s an asset failure? How do you trace it so you can avoid it in future by having a digital twin of the product?”

Siemens has deep knowledge in several domains, in the areas of energy generation, process industries, etc. They can bring this together with Bentley’s most innovative tools to market. They are very optimistic this will bring significant value to customers around the world.

Rail electrification of mobility can’t happen fast enough. In the OpenRail environment, how can we do the best job for overhead catenary lines – a kit of parts and more? Siemens has developed for their own use good software for overhead catenary lines, that works well with Siemens other offerings. How can Open Rail electrical and the Siemens overhead line electrification best understand the control environment of the functional and the physical? “OpenRail designers will all have the benefit of, and will work very well with Siemens hardware, but will not be limited to that,” said Ludwig. “There will be no separate licensure for the Siemens rail and electrification; it will be inside OpenRail. This won’t be done for the first version of CONNECTEdition OpenRail. but for the next one, with absolute openness of Bentley Systems.”

TopCon Positioning Systems entered into a collaboration agreement with Bentley for the Constructioneering Academy initiative, for construction industry professionals to learn best practices in constructioneering, a process of managing and integrating survey, engineering and construction data to improve project delivery.

Paddock spoke on the topic, “VR/AR/MR Technologies at NASA’s JSC; Past, Present and Future.” At the Johnson Space Center they use VR for training astronauts, among other things, and are looking at augmented and mixed reality.

The Orion space station office funds NASA to provide a VR training facility, products and services to NASA stakeholders. NASA has also built a head mounted display, and robotic operations including simulations, 3D graphics, and immersive HMOs.

Eddie Paddock, Johnson Space Center

According to Paddock, they started in the 90s supporting the shuttle, and the Hubble Repair Mission. “As the space station was built, we built up training for the onboard space station, and have a mass handling robot that simulates mass in weightlessness, a mixed reality robot. We’re looking at Oculus, and game engines like Unity and Unreal, and Avatar tracking systems like Lighthouse and Visualize. They have some kind of reflector of passive or non-passive sensor and infrared emitters to give you location in space. We’re also looking at Chroma Key to filter out objects.”

In the 90s. NASA bought primitive VR headsets and then built some of their own. The most recent one is built with Oculus. They took the Oculus one apart and used it for each eye. Paddock said it has good contrast, it’s twice the fidelity of an Oculus. “On the top are sensors and we have an electromagnetic tracking system and some avatar stuff,” said Paddock.

They also build their own software, DOUG Graphics, a 3D graphics engine and renderer with lots of parallel processing and scripting built in. Paddock said transitioning to Unity or Unreal would be cheaper.

The astronauts are always tethered, and there is about 10 minutes of compressed nitrogen fuel available to them if they should become untethered. They can train for this in the VR lab. Underwater training gives them the feeling of weightlessness, but they can’t see what’s in space, so the lab augments that training with an immersive space experience.

Hololens or 3D glasses can augment with images on top. Hololens can identify tables and fixtures, and you can bring up overlays of procedures or interact dynamically with an iPad on the ground, according to Paddock. You can see in a pump what you need to fix and someone can dynamically interact with it. This is untethered and just coming out now. This type of approach gives a good representation of augmented reality but you’re limited to view and performance.

The Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) is looking for ways to do integrate VR with it. The idea is to integrate an immersive VR system including full body avatar tracking into it.

For the Orion Program, in space, it’s necessary to be able to exercise. They are working on building an exercise device to be used in a small space with four people.

A lot of immersive environments for operations and planning for Mars missions can be done using VR. Hololens has a GPU that augments reality with graphics, and uses a slam technique by which it builds the geometric stuff of a room. It can interact dynamically with a remote device to augment the reality. So if you have to augment an engine motor, it knows where you are, and it gives you augmenting the reality with immersion.

Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems, spoke on the topic, “Connecting Virtuality and Reality: BIM Advancements Converge for the Pope’s Visit to Philadelphia.”

An overview of Bentley software was presented, including the convergence of technologies. Convergence starts with digital engineering to which the 3D context is added, and which Bentley calls “reality modeling.” In digital engineering, advancing BIM, “B” stands for better asset performance.

Projects start with design modeling then add analytical and construction modeling, but the whole project is tracking through to the performance of the asset. Both the virtuality and reality can be coordinated through Bentley’s Connect Edition.

“We acquired Acute3D software,” said Bentley. “it enables using ordinary digital photography to create 3D meshes. Scalability is not a point cloud result but a reality mesh which is seamless. It can have any level of precision and accuracy. Serial-ity uses a UAV to capture a successive status during the construction of a hospital.”

Bentley’s objective was to apply it to infrastructure projects, and used a drone, supplemented by pictures from the ground. “You can even use a smartphone, down to any level of accuracy, supplemented by additional photos. That becomes part of the reality mesh, and we can connect that to reliability software for transformers. The reality mesh is in the environment where engineers work.”

“As a business we had the opportunity to create a 3D reality mesh of where the Pope would visit,” said Bentley. “There was a corridor of interest where a higher definition of precision was required and we used a helicopter using Aerometrics, supplemented with street level photographs, pictures taken with an ordinary camera, using ContextCapture.” ContextCapture does not require a lot of expertise to deliver high quality reality modeling. You get points of view with 16 hours of processing on one computer, which resulted in reality mesh inside the cathedral and was used inside MicroStation by engineers.

The advantage comes when you converge reality and virtuality, in the case of the Pope’s visit, which included 60,000 temporary structures, barricades, water sources plus much more. Trips to the field weren’t necessary, as they could use precise geo-location to place objects.

The company ESM Productions was responsible for the large scale production of the Pope’s visit.

Bentley used their product LumenRT software to enliven the plan which includes simulating digital nature for the Pope’s visit, simulating time of day and year like in the movies. They could enliven this environment with moving people and crowds, assuring the security of the Pope and the nearly 1 million people in attendance.

“When you produce a model it captures the GPS coordinates of the models,” said Bentley.

The new Comcast tower in Philadelphia was designed by Lord Foster and Partners in London.

“In MicroStation we can engineer the shading system, and use LumenRT to solve the problem of shading, and converge reality and virtuality,” said Bentley. “When Pictometry imagery was taken, it showed simulation of how the construction sequence will begin. First they use a reality modeling capture to see how far it had come by the time of the high definition survey. Then it was compared with the most recent survey. We went back last month with helicopter and drone to see how far it had come.”

In this case Bentley was looking at improving transportation capacity, using OpenRoads ConceptStation. This is a national roadway and bridge to populate, envision and enliven. The cost of project and materials, and how it will appear in Philadelphia are of primary concern.

“With the confluence of digital photography, ubiquitous with UAV, it’s a greater opportunity for you because surveying can be done continuously rather than occasionally,” noted Bentley. “We have software from PointTools, Descartes, and ContextCapture software, and engineering apps start from the premise of reality modeling. You can load huge reality meshes onto a smartphone.”

Wearality Sky

David Smith, CTO, Wearality, a 3D pioneer of VR, AR, and other technologies, talked about how his company is dedicated to delivering and creating AR products for consumers and business.

“Think of AR is a superset,” Smith said. “I’ve have seen the evolution of computers from a different perspective. My mentor is Alan Kay, creator of the personal computer. We’re on a threshold of something that is going to empower us in a way none of us can imagine.”

According to Smith, the emergence and innovation of smartphones have been the primary driver of the VR revolution. We are coming close to visual acuity, he said.

He noted iPhone performance has grown with the scale of improvement of the CPU of up through the iPhone 6, with 80x increased performance particularly in GPU.

“There has been a huge dip in PC sales,” said Smith. “While smartphone sales are in the billions, PCs are in the millions. The vast majority of investment in technology is in mobile — low power high performance, trackers, cameras — all things that define VR fall into this category.”

“Mobile VR like Cardboard is the dominant platform, like Cardboard, all designed to be carried with you to some degree, but they are still sort of big. Not too far in the future, each time you get a smartphone, it will have VR.”

Every single part of VR is being improved to make it better in spite of the fact it’s for phones, and it is very high quality and costs nearly nothing.

Everything is great about it except lenses, said Smith, citing that Cardboard has at best a 110 degree view, and light is leaking out, with a very narrow exit pupil, chromatic aberration, out of focus in peripheral vision, and the lenses are heavy. “Unlike the rest of VR technologies that are being taken care of with smartphone technology, there is no advancement in lenses.”

That’s where Wearality comes in with their head wearable displays. New capabilities required by Lockheed Marin customers required new kinds of devices. The Wearality panorama lens creates a very wide field of view (FOV). Existing lenses provide a small FOV (70 degree in Cardboard).

This new one is designed for humans to look through. Almost every other lens has been designed off the shelf. You can get a full 180-view with the Wearality lens.

“We can get from 120-180 view with full peripheral vision, can wear eyeglasses with them, we have the widest exit pupil (like with binoculars), very thin lens, and it enables a foldable VR device,” said Smith. “We can deliver a bigger picture than a 100-inch TV or IMAX. This works through your phone.”

There is huge cell phone use in many countries for entertainment, so to have this type of experience on the phone will be a real selling point. This technology is possibly two years away.

“When you buy a mobile device it’s not going in your pocket, it’s going to be something you wear,” said Smith. “It will change the way you think, work and communicate. You’re defined more by how you communicate than anything.”

Among those products is one hardware product, Autodesk’s own 3D printer, but the company produces 99% software.

Now ReCap includes the ability to do reality mesh, making it possible to create high quality meshes from reality data. Users can fix meshes and optimize them for use in digital workflows, subtractive manufacturing, additive manufacturing and 3D interactive media.

The reality mesh is capable of creating 3D meshes from reality inputs, such as photogrammetry, handheld scanners, and laser scanners.

The potential of 3D scanning for indoor management of assets with geo-location, for use in transportation projects, surveying, with new mobile mapping solutions from vendors such as Trimble and Surphaser, is formidable. As prices continue to come down for accurate, more accessible 3D scanning products, the door opens for more stakeholders to be able to access 3D scanning with less investment and special expertise requirements.

At SPAR3D, SurphSLAM high precision mobile mapping solution from Surphaser

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/04/14/spar3d-2016-expo-and-conference-special-report/feed/04424GISCafe News from the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2015 Conference in Londonhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/11/13/giscafe-news-from-the-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2015-conference-in-london/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/11/13/giscafe-news-from-the-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2015-conference-in-london/#respondFri, 13 Nov 2015 15:59:32 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4249At the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2015 Conference held in London a week ago, it was noted that GIS was an integrated part of Bentley’s offerings, particularly in the utilities and assets areas of the products offerings. Products are being rolled into CONNECT Editions, which will allow users to leverage cloud services through a common modeling environment platform. Other products such as Bentley’s OpenUtilities, leverage GIS and their ContextCapture is being used to obtain a high resolution and georeferenced model of cities and even countries.

Bhupinder Singh, Senior vice president at Bentley Systems, talked about how the cloud is the avenue by which we achieve convergence. And convergence is seen in the implementation of new CONNECT Edition products, those products that converge with others. All the CONNECT Edition products leverage cloud services. All CONNECT Edition products are underpinned with development and delivery through a platform of a common modeling environment.

MicroStation CONNECT Edition contains brand new modeling.

Singapore Land Authority, Be Inspired Award 2015 Winnder – Innovation in Government

ProjectWise is being used by 2/3 of organizations today. In ProjectWise CONNECT Edition, cloud services, transmittals, RFIS have been added, and users can securely drop design content into the supply chain without the need for another cloud service such as DropBox.

I-models, a way of packaging content, have become commonly used and discussed, leveraging Bentley application content and non- content.

Navigator CONNECT Edition offers desktop to field connectivity as well as field information captured can be resolved through workflows with cloud services. Structural Navigator CONNECT Edition is also available on the phone. Now larger screen models are very capable of displaying these applications in the field.

Other CONNECT products introduced include SACS and Moses.

A new service offered by Bentley is Scenario Services that now support a large library of performance indicators. “The Cloud is amazingly scalable,” said Singh. “We can put that in your hands in preconfigured compute clusters. Scenario Services helps you make the best choice.”

All Bentley analysis contains some sort of Wizard and Scenario Services is no exception. When you have a lot of computing power, you generate a lot of data and analysis results. Scenario Services will help find the most meaningful data by mixing numerical and graphical displays. It has been demonstrated with piping systems and pipe support optimization, structural with structural infographics and doing comparisons, allow for combining indicators and weighted combinations with great visualizations. It can be used with GenerativeComponents, Bentley’s generative design software, and you can use other cloud services such as Microsoft Azure with it as well.

Advancements in Government

There are many advancements for government users, such as 3D visualization, 3D mapping, 3D Cities and 3D for building information modeling.

The Singapore Land Authority is an example of an agency that wanted to create a 3D city model of their entire nation. They have run the model continuously in order to map and model their city and nation that will provide the next generation of 2D/3D cadastre. The First Nationwide 3D Model

The agency Blom has chosen ContextCaputure to be used in Stockholm to counsel citizens about the city. It is used on large touch tables, and will soon be available on the web. It can be used in all 3D GIS formats needed by clients.

Accuracy is somewhat dependent on accurate ground control points, yet the same is true with other imagery. You can use low or high resolution imagery. The accuracy will depend on what you choose to put in.

The next version of ContentCapture will have more tools for those who are not photogrammatrists.

Coastal Mapping for the City of Onkaparinga

Coastal erosion is encroaching into roadways and houses in Onkaparinga, on the southern fringe of Adelaide, South Australia. They wanted to model the 30 km coastline, and took a number ground points, and photos. They created a really accurate model, so they can look at change management and analyze the coastline over the years. This way they can make sure they can improve their safety.

Field crews needed access to up to date network data, quickly. They make thousands of changes per month, and no one has to come into the office now that they are using Bentley Map Mobile. This gives them access to large datasets on the tablet with or without an internet connection, and leverages a GPS interface.

Large datasets can be downloaded to the device so the worker can be offline, get them updates every day, and they only receive the updates rather than entire files. The product Bentley OpenUtilities has been used in beta at Western Power.

Bentley OpenUtilities is to be available in December 2015. OpenUtilities has the following features:

Design and cost utility networks

Manage design workflows

Maintain utility network maps

Manage networks with reports and analysis

OpenUtilities represents all utilities and serves as the GIS enterprise for organization and design, or it can serve as a design tool for another GIS. It does design, cost estimating, and managing network information.

AssetWise ECM allows for managing performance with built-in reliability, and looking to extend the life of aging assets with analyst reporting on reliability and APM, with proof that assets can be reliable to operate over time.

AssetWise APM V7.4 will soon be announced, with the following capabilities:

3D spatial asset management

view live data from other systems

interactive asset diagrams

track inspection compliance

conduct a HAZOP study

EAM integration certification

Support for Chinese language

Advancements in Water and Wastewater with AssetWise Amulet

Operational analytics is a business process

Framework for converging IT, OT and ET

Leverage industrial internet of things.

Enabling Big Data for smart outcomes

IDC market report forecasts a strong CAGR of 18% between 2014-2018

South Australia Water Ensures Customer Support with AssetWise Amulet

South Australia Water had forecasted a demand and optimized use for a AUD $400M network upgrade.

They created whole set of decision support tools as well as 7-day asset registry, looking at predicting demand in this area. They are able to save AUD $3 million in electricity, reduced operational expenses by AUD $400K and had better and faster decision support, and improved visibility into demand with using AssetWise Amulet.

Integration of hydraulic modeling with SCADA improves decision making by giving users information on the model where there aren’t sensors, and it can also predict what might happen next in the system.

WaterGEMS added the ability for users to add SCADA information – what happens if there is a fire, or what happens if there is a break in the system?

Bentley is not only making tools easy to use, and use-case easy, but also providing the results of hydraulic information and benefits from “optioneering,” but within the environment users are regularly using so users don’t have to learn to use another solution.

SCADA shows current state of the system and stores historical trends

SCADA Human Machine Interface (HMI) shows model results

Brings modeling into the control room

Hydraulic modeling fills in between measured points and calculates attributes not measured

Perform additional calculations for SCADA control room

Reduces costs and improves service.

Government and Utilities

New sewer and stormwater offerings advance quality and productivity integrated into one product.

These were separate and distinct processes. By integrating them users get to see the results of hydraulic analysis and subsurface pipes, that often have tight corridors. Storm systems are gravity fed systems and it is usually necessary to work with the utilities that are present.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/11/13/giscafe-news-from-the-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2015-conference-in-london/feed/04249Bentley Systems’ Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference to be held in London Next Week #YII2015https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/10/30/4235/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/10/30/4235/#respondSat, 31 Oct 2015 00:16:59 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4235A sneak preview of what’s coming up this week in London at the Hilton Metropole at Bentley Systems’ Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference, are the following two Bentley blogs, outlining topics for the Utilities Forum: Advancing Utilities for Better Performing Assets and Advancing Utilities for the Digital Age.

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, will deliver the keynote on how we can outsmart this digital data deluge.

Rowan Steele, Operations Engineer at South Australia Water, will share his organization’s experience of how predictive operational analytics is the key to improved operational performance and smarter decision making.

Bob Mankowski, a VP with Bentley Systems, and Dr. Anne Kemp VP of Atkins, will explore the role of geospatial technologies in this digital age.

Highlights of the Utilities for the Better Performing Assets Forum include:

Dave Coplin, Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, will provide a thought-provoking keynote on how we can outsmart the digital deluge.

Dr. Anne Kemp, Fellow and Director at Atkins, chair of ICE’s BIM Action Group and BIM4Infrastructure UK, will discuss the expanding role of geospatial technology.

Rowan Steele, Operations Engineer at South Australia Water, presents on his organization’s adoption of smart operations and predictive analytics.

The 2015 Be Inspired Awards, awarded for excellence in various areas of infrastructure technology achievement, will be presented on the Wednesday evening of the conference. Winners are chosen by a jury from a group of finalists, who have submitted their projects for consideration.

The week promises to be full of rich, state-of-the-art information for both AEC and GIS professionals. Hope to see many of you there. #YII2015

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2015/10/30/4235/feed/04235Special GISCafe Coverage: 3D Cities: Envisioning Communities of the Futurehttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/11/21/special-giscafe-coverage-3d-cities-envisioning-communities-of-the-future/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/11/21/special-giscafe-coverage-3d-cities-envisioning-communities-of-the-future/#commentsFri, 21 Nov 2014 14:36:38 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=3718Cities worldwide are charged with the same challenge: that of creating or retrofitting sustainable, intelligent infrastructure. Cities need the best in design, geospatial, visualization and analytical tools to realize a viable and intelligent city design. 3D City design is architectural design times thousands, plus it must have the ability to be interwoven with other surrounding infrastructure and foster an urban conversation.

CyberCity 3D

Urban data must be managed, visualized and analyzed, taking into account all legal, code regulations, utility and site planning as well as legacy data and geography. CityGML provides an open data model and XML-based format for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO TC211. A plethora of companies are providing products for 3D cityscape technology, and providing GIS to be able to manage, visualize and analyze all the information that makes up an entire metropolis.

Parsons Brinckerhoff used a variety of Autodesk BIM software and visualization software to create large models of Seattle to illustrate how the tunnel project would transform the waterfront landscape. Image courtesy Washington State DOT and Parsons Brinckerhoff

Some cities have already adopted 3D city technology. The Netherlands’ national policy for information sharing includes the OGC City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) Encoding Standard that provides a common way for modeling and encoding 3D urban content, because it is accurate and easily integrated. CityGML also provides widely available elevation data and physical infrastructure data that are very valuable to a country where 2/3 of the land is vulnerable to flooding and is also heavily populated.

Berlin also commissioned the creation of a citywide 3D model that is available to all, and encoded in CityGML.

Not Just GIS Anymore

Bergman Associates used CityEngine to model the visual and economic impact of the City of Rochester, New York Master Plan. Web scene image courtesy of Bergman Associates

3D cities take advantage of a lot of available data in the form of 2D, 3D and 4D (temporal) data, satellite imagery, sensor systems and processing devices both wired and wireless. The primary function of CityGML is “to easily share semantically rich, georegistered 3D content to be used for many applications such as visualization, integration with gaming simulators, energy modeling, emergency response, etc.”

Other forms of data important to 3D cities include civil engineering data as well as architectural CAD data and Building Information Modeling (BIM) data. Data encoded using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) an ISO standard for BIM issued by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) can also be incorporated into CityGML.

The OGC Land and Infrastructure Domain Working Group (LandInfraDWG) is focused on determining how to best integrate and support the LandXML schema within the OGC framework, as well as how to better manage and integrated CAD based information with other OGC standards.

LandXML data is valuable to the larger geospatial data community but the format is not currently integrated with any of the OGC’s or ISO’s geospatial standards.

Challenges & Solutions

3D buildings and cities have been part of Google Earth for nearly two years. Google starts with 3D maps, generated via stereo photogrammetry from aerial imagery then converts city data to full 3D that was automatically generated. Google’s way of being able to provide visualizations of new cities quickly in 3D, gives users the immediate, rich experience of a city. Even though resolution isn’t always as sharp as you would find in an application whose business it is to model buildings and terrain, this is accessible to a great many people who are non-traditional GIS or CAD users. The combination of Google Earth and Google SketchUp however, allows users to use the SketchUp tool for preliminary drawings of buildings and the cities they populate. Google’s influence on the world of 3D has fueled a movement among technology providers to provide tools that are easier to use and can be used by many non-technical people. Google also updates their satellite imagery twice a month.

The main challenge for 3D cities according to Francois Valois, director of Product Management for Bentley Systems, is that the data set size is so big and requires enterprise tools.

“They need our Bentley ProjectWise and also Oracle Spatial, which we support fully,” says Valois. “You can create models, 3D city buildings as well as textures on top of that. That’s something we enhanced in the latest release of Bentley Map Service Pack 4 (SP4) wherein you have the ability to use Oracle Textures.”

Bentley Map Complex Visualization

Bentley Map is a powerful 2D/3D GIS and mapping software where engineering and geospatial information is unified. It includes interoperability, mapping 3D modeling, terrain modeling, point cloud processing embedding with advanced point cloud processing.

Included in Bentley Map:

Enhanced interoperability with Esri’s File Geodatabase, without the need for an Esri license.

Interoperability with Oracle 12C, the latest release of the Oracle Spatial database, and also support Oracle Spatial Textures for 3D city models, and their new Spiral support for information mobility.

CityGML added texture support, and can add full blown 3D city models that are shared.

Advanced point cloud processing so users can create geospatial assets directly from point clouds.

Dynamic cartographic representations

Another challenge is underground utilities mapping. For that Bentley offers Subsurface Utility Engineer (SUE) software that allows people to take the 2D GIS presentation and represent it in 3D for engineering purposes. “When they make a new design they need to bring that data back to the 2D GIS. That’s what we call ‘information mobility and BIM,’” says Valois.

Autodesk is another organization that approaches 3D Cities from an engineering perspective, offering 3D model-based design (BIM) software and cloud based services. Communities of the future will be served by the following products:

Autodesk City of Vancouver InfraWorks

Autodesk InfraWorks 360, a planning and design software solution that enables engineers to convey preliminary design intent in a real world environment This product combines cloud-enabled collaboration with automated rich 3D model-building. Of all Autodesk’s visualization products, InfraWorks is best suited to enable city stakeholders to visualize the breadth of a project.

Autodesk C-FACT for Cities is a “Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-Stabilizing Targets (“C-FACT”)” approach that offers a free, openly available tool to help cities set science-based climate targets. This is available as an online tool to help city leaders to calculate GHG reduction targets that are in line with scientific climate stabilization targets from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and in proportion to cities’ relative GDP growth.

While Bentley and Autodesk’s approach to 3D Cities is derived from an engineering perspective, Esri addresses the challenges of 3D Cities with their visual ArcGIS platform. According to Shannon McElvaney, Global Industry Manager, Community Development and Brooks Patrick, Solutions Engineer, 3D Markets at Esri, ArcGIS allows users to visualize the location of real world objects and to examine and analyze the relationship of those objects with nearby features of the built and natural environment. “Our customers use these relationships to find patterns and examine processes,” says McElvaney. “Some of this is done in 2D, but more and more is being done in 3D. Esri has integrated 3D across the platform.”

Included in Esri’s 3D GIS are ArcScene, 3D Analyst, and CityEngine, all familiar to Esri users. In the 10.3 release there will be a new application to this product family called ArcGIS Pro.

Esri’s new ArcGIS Pro that comes standard with ArcGIS 10.3 allows users to view and create 2D and 3D maps and designs simultaneously. Data courtesy of City of San Diego.

Esri tackles the challenge of quickly creating informative maps for spatial analysts, when maps are needed immediately for predicting natural events and their impact on existing structures and cities. ArcGIS Pro will allow users to quickly create maps and visualizations in both 2D and 3D. Spatial analysts will be happy with the analytical tools that allow them to explore a problem from all angles. By publishing content created in ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online, non-technical users can view visualizations through a web-browser-based interface.

Other tools include ArcGIS 3D Analyst, an ArcGIS for Desktop extension that allows users to conduct 3D analysis and answer questions. These tools can help determine the contour, slope and elevation of a landscape; assess the size of the shadow cast by a proposed building, or the geology beneath the surface of an area.

ArcScene is a 3D visualization application that allows users to view your GIS data in 3D. With ArcScene users can overlay many layers of data in a 3D environment.

Esri’s CityEngine is advanced 3D city software for urban planners, architects, and designers to create alternative versions of environmental change or proposed assets using procedural modeling.

Charlotte Stormwater Concept. Image courtesy of CyberCity 3D

CyberCity 3D is a 3D modeling company specializing in 3D GIS buildings. Their high detailed models are produced using photogrammetry of stereo imagery and include automated attribute fields such as building height, slope of roof, and orientation.

CyberCity’s 3D patented modeling software is not for sale, according to CEO Kevin DeVito. Rather, the company sells its models and the associated data that it produces. “Our city library includes 80 3D cities across the globe,” says DeVito. “Our models are available in most popular 3D formats including .shp, .gdb, .obj, .dae, .skp and .kml. This makes it easy for users to integrate their buildings into leading 3D GIS applications.”

FluxMetro

FluxMetro digitizes an entire city’s building codes for hyper-realistic land-use planning. Company materials describe FluxMetro in this way: “Metro aggregates data from cities, tax assessors, and third-party sources in one place, so you quickly understand the parameters for a land parcel. An interactive 3D map of the neighborhood gives you a sense of place, situating your proposed project into the surrounding landscape. For each parcel, Metro shows you only the development codes that are applicable, including conditional overlays and uses. Metro gives you a quick assessment of project potential. If and when you are ready to go deeper, Metro provides helpful reference links to deeds, entitlement history, and permitting history. Take a snapshot of your project and share with anyone. Get your stakeholders aligned around a common vision of the opportunity you are pursuing.”

Costs Coming Down

All participants in this questionnaire agree that the costs are coming down for 3D Cities solutions. According to Lance McKee, senior staff writer for the OGC, new and more efficient data collection strategies will help drive costs down, and processing technology will continue to advance the processing of point cloud data and high volume data such as photomosaics. All these technology advancements will result in lower cost 3D content.

“Standards will help unlock the value of these content collection activities by enabling enhanced sharing, end user access, gaming, etc.,” says McKee. “The number of organizations specifying open standards in procurements is growing, which expands the market for standards-based products and services, which influences more purchasers to go with standards. 3D cities will very likely become increasingly dependent on the Internet’s essentially open ecosystem rather than on closed product and service ecosystems.”

According to DeVito at CyberCity 3D, the lowering cost of 3D solutions is fueled by higher efficiencies in imagery acquisition, expanded open-source data such as OpenStreetMap, and greater GIS functionality.

“More and more cities are buying LiDAR surveys of their own cities and regions, either to update their flood data or for other reasons, which is driving down the cost of 3D source material,” says Patrick from Esri.

In addition, the automation of the creation of 3D buildings for cityscapes is being offered by companies such as EagleView’s Pictometry and Acute 3D. Because of the widespread number of government organizations who have Esri license agreements already, those organizations already access to a large amount of Esri 3D technology.

Valois of Bentley said that although the costs are coming down, 3D Cities is still not a cheap undertaking. However, the 3D city model created from the architect’s plans rather than survey data can make the process easier.

The accessibility of point clouds, drones and imagery is all part of what Bentley calls “reality modeling.” “We’ve put a lot of effort into being able to model reality as cheaply as possible,” said Valois. Reality modeling serves as the basis for design, planning, construction and ultimately operations.

A key technology in making 3D modeling of urban environments affordable is the power of cloud computing. That, combined with more affordable software access options, make the management of 3D city models possible on more devices, making the technology far more mobile and facile. Autodesk’s “pay-as-you-need, pay-as-you-go” subscription program allows users to take advantage of state-of-the-art technologies more affordably.

The Future of 3D Cities

The potential for 3D Cities technology touches every aspect of the built environment. “There are a lot of things you can do with that: architecture, urban planning, noise analysis, flood analysis, underground, and avoid clashes with new infrastructure that may be being built,” says Francois Valois.

Esri’s McElvaney says that “what we have dreamed about for 10 years is now possible. The ever-increasing computing power and decreasing prices for computing hardware have changed the market a lot. Just think of virtual reality devices such as Oculus Rift.”

Autodesk sees cities across the world beginning to realize the value of city-scale BIM modeling for urban planning and design. They cite the growing collaboration between software developers, such as Autodesk and large engineering firms and municipalities, as another big factor in the growth of 3D Cities.

“The generation that has grown up on gaming and new technologies is accustomed to seeing 3D cities render themselves in 3D on the fly,” says Lynda Sharkey, Sustainable Cities product manager, Autodesk. “Their experiences are spearheading the 3D Cities movement. As data becomes more accessible, pervasive and more open, 3D possibilities expand.”

In 10.3 Esri introduces a new way of working with 3D using Web Scenes. This will enable 3D to work across the ArcGIS platform on servers, desktop, browsers, and on devices. Over time, users will share 3D virtual scenes so that others will be able to interact with the scenes as well as mash them up and use them in analytical processes.

Summary

Whether 3D city data is being used for design, planning, construction, operations, or whether users are taking the data from point clouds, photogrammetry, 3D BIM models, or just taking a 2D footprint and extruding it, the goal is to provide a more realistic picture of the entire community. The ability to perform simulations during the early stage of design will lead to better urban planning decisions.

Early adopters, which include a surprising number of cities worldwide, have already seen 10%-25% increase in efficiencies by adopting this approach to their cities.

The wide reaching number of industries that can be served by 3D Cities technologies has yet to be tapped. Besides the governmental bodies, there are community health organizations, environmental standards groups, DOTs, and other stakeholder organizations in cities that can benefit. The technology will demand and facilitate greater collaboration and data sharing between involved parties, in a world where trust is not always forthcoming.

Hopefully the new collaborative climate will foster a shift in people’s thinking and create not only more livable cities but also create more collaborative working environments for those responsible for building the projects.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/11/21/special-giscafe-coverage-3d-cities-envisioning-communities-of-the-future/feed/33718Bentley’s “Year in Infrastructure 2014” announces new geospatial releaseshttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/11/11/bentleys-year-in-infrastructure-2014-announces-new-geospatial-releases/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/11/11/bentleys-year-in-infrastructure-2014-announces-new-geospatial-releases/#respondTue, 11 Nov 2014 21:07:46 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=3700In the “Utilities and Government” breakout session on Media Day at the Bentley “Year in Infrastructure 2014” event held in London last week, a number of Bentley executives spoke on various aspects of utilities and government, with new developments for 3D cities.

Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2014 Conference, London

The event showcases work being done with Bentley Systems’ software, with presentations by all the Be Inspired Award finalists for the year, topped off by a gala Awards ceremony on Wednesday evening.

Cyndi Smith, senior director of Application Advantage at Bentley, introduced speakers. Aidan Mercer, senior industry marketing manager for Government spoke on “Advancements in Government and Life cycle Management of Infrastructure.” He also spoke about “Advanced BIM for cities,” which includes the various BIM levels used in 3D cities: Level 1: 3D visualization and design; Level 2: performance improvements; Level 3: extending into the operations at the complete asset level and this contributes to a smarter city. He mentioned a really excited finalist in the BE Awards this year, the City of Eindhoven, a city that uses MicroStation, Descartes, ProjectWise, and Navigator in its development of new city infrastructure.

Know What’s Underground

Rachel Rogers, Applications Advantage for Civil, Geospatial, Hydraulics and Hydrology, announced Bentley Subsurface Utility Design and Analysis in OpenRoads will be available in early 2015, and will be a game changer in terms of knowing what’s underground.

The product automatically creates a 3D model and brings together the information needed, provides 3D modeling of all underground utilities, that you can readily update into your GIS database. This gives you a true picture of what’s underground.

One of the highlights is that you have visualization clash detection which can drive construction costs down.

Utility Industry with Cyndi Smith

An industry trend seen recently: convergence. “With the convergence of information technology and operations technology, some projects I’m seeing are bringing in engineering technology,” said Smith.

Better utilities performance catalyzed by:

Drivers and enablers

Smarter networks and technology

Regulations

Economic factors

Organizational evolution

Results better performing utilities infrastructure

American Electric Power (BE Inspired Award winners in the category Advancing Asset Lifecycle Information Management) are using BentleyAssetWise and Bentley Substation to deploy across 11 states, with a transmission network that runs all over the U.S. They use AssetWise in a number of ways, to create their Work Management Systems, create correlation of work orders and object within a design, and allow objects in the design to visually depict their status inside Bentley Substation.

Time Warner Cable, the largest cable TV company in North America (also the BE Award winner in the category Innovation in Utilities and Communications Networks), had 32 different design centers doing design and fiber network in North America, created six engineering hubs, where everyone is designing into these six servers. Network assets are in the GIS in Oracle Spatial and are available to all their operations support systems. They have achieved a first year ROI of 40% and they project 121% over the next 3 years.

Bentley Map and OpenUtilities

Francois Valois, product management, Bentley Map and OpenUtilities, talked about the new release of Bentley Map that brings “information mobility to the forefront with expanded interoperability.”

Advanced point cloud processing so users can create geospatial assets directly from point clouds.

Dynamic cartographic representations

The new release of Bentley Map Mobile improves productivity with redlining and speedy dataset updates. It is a geospatial application that gives you fast access to geospatial data in the field. You can locate assets based on a query of GPS location.

Bentley Map Mobile supports vector geometry attribute and raster backups for large datasets. It also supports iOS, Android and the upcoming Windows platform.

A key announcement is that of the new OpenUtilities products for streamlined design and management of utility networks.

What is OpenUtilities? OpenUtilities is standalone multi-utility GIS and modeling for electric, gas, water and wastewater. This means that it includes MicroStation and Bentley Map, WaterCAD and SewerCAD and supports SysNet. “Our data can be stored in SQL Server Spatial or Oracle Spatial, so people can access the data from any other geospatial package,” said Valois. OpenUtilities Map comes as a suite and is easy to adopt.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2014/11/11/bentleys-year-in-infrastructure-2014-announces-new-geospatial-releases/feed/03700Bentley Geospatial and Utilities Updatehttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/11/13/bentley-geospatial-and-utilities-update/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/11/13/bentley-geospatial-and-utilities-update/#commentsTue, 13 Nov 2012 22:32:04 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=2177The primary markets for geospatial solutions for Bentley software appear to be utilities and civil. As the data that can be put into a building information model becomes more complex and analytical, the need to incorporate some level of analytics and spatial information becomes greater.

Four geospatial-type technology previews were shown at the Be Inspired 2012 Conference in Amsterdam this week. The conference showcases the work of finalists in the Be Inspired competition for customers who have used Bentley software in innovative and game-changing ways.
–
The four technology previews that touch on the geospatial area were as follows:

A new release of Utilities designer will offer faster, higher quality, more resilient designs, lower total cost of ownership and does not require replacement of existing GIS. The word is that Utilities Designer will be packaged as a standalone product.
–Bentley Map Mobile is probably one of most exciting announcements this week. The mobile map app allows you to view the most up-to-date information on tablets, work with spatial information without being a GIS specialist, redline, and edit attributes of the geospatial features on tablets.
–Bentley Descartes V8i (SELECTseries 4) provides support for point clouds. Faraz Ravi , director of project management for Point Clouds at Bentley, said that the new release would establish existing point clouds.

Point clouds are a very rich detailed and accurate millions of points captured typically with a laser scanner, and can be black and white or color. Point clouds have become important for classification, where in the early stage of projects we collect geometry. How can we model projects’ context quickly and cost view efficiently? At the initial planning stages point clouds can be for planning studies feasibility, massing, and view shed analysis.

Besides Bentley Descartes, there is high quality movie output in Bentley Pointools v8i. The camera can view from any viewpoint, access dangerous environments, be used by non-specialists and is easy to use. They can be used instead of vector models as design elements and for clash detection. A use that seems close to a geospatial task isusing point clouds in the resampling of crops, which currently is not an intelligent activity.

Beyond the four technology previews outlined above, some other developments suggest geospatial has been integrated into Bentley AEC workflows to some degree or another. Ron Gant, civil engineering director, said that many professionals want to know, how can I manage diverse geotechnical data acquired for a project?

The Bentley product gINT acquired four years ago, aggregates data from different sources for analysis and mobility and incorporates that into an information model as an asset.

This is achieved with interoperability and live linkage. Although it is not a new product, it is a tool that can provide important data to a GIS environment.

“In order to bring data into geospatial environment we’ve integrated gINT into Geo Web Publisher V8, that can draw selection set and bring data out,” said Gant. Geoweb Publisher allows you to do sampling and original test sampling. gINT also integrates with Esri’s ArcGIS.

Trimble and Bentley Create Strategic Alliance

An important partnership was formed recently between Trimble and Bentley Systems. Trimble has been well known for its reputation as provider of construction solutions for heavy, civil and building contractors, and also its skills in the area of field positioning technologies such as robotic total stations, 3D laser scanners and global navigation satellite (GNSS) positioning solutions. The alliance will give construction professionals a greater insight into construction problems and provide Bentley tools with enhanced positioning solutions that they have not had before.

“Bentley Systems’ revenue on an historical gap basis grew 10% to a record $523 million,” said Bentley. Asia was a major driver of this growth, increasing to comprise 19% of total revenue from 16% in 2010.

The software subscription business model accounts for 17% of revenues in 2011. The company’s resilient subscription revenues have enabled them to fully recover from the downturn faster than their competitors and software peers with less volatility and with greater visibility into this coming year.

The subscription business model also benefits the user organization that had invested in their future reuse of infrastructure information modeling through Bentley software. The relative lack of volatility in Bentley Systems’ revenues is good for the company’s stability and reliability and that is, along with subscription elimination of cost barriers for technology adoption and improvement, is good for user organizations.

Bentley said he believes this advantage has been proven out by the downtown and now the resumption of their revenue advancement from the prior peak. “For Bentley Systems overall the economic recovery will continue,’ said Bentley. “We are modestly optimistic about a new normal of consistent organic growth.”

2012 has already started stronger during the first quarter to date than did either 2010 or 2009.

AEC and infrastructure has been characterized by steadily increasing utilization rates of infrastructure professionals. While overall building and plant work being primarily private sector funded, continues to advance, similar geospatial work that is largely public funded, remains relatively stagnant in the developed world where Bentley had a predominant footprint.

“So for 2012, Bentley Systems is conservatively budgeting for 6% organic revenue growth approaching our multi-year expectation target for this new normal,” said Bentley. “Among Bentley growth drivers, growing consistently every year and usually in double digits, are ProjectWise, STAAD, Bentley Map, ProSteel and AutoPipe along with the overall domains of structural bridge, and electrical engineering.”

Bentley referenced tracking revenues through the FCC for Autodesk for its architecture, engineering and construction AEC segment

Bentley holds its position as “advancing #2 in revenues and comparing its 2011 $523 million to the total reported by Autodesk for its fiscal year that ended January at $626 million.

“Also in contrast to Autodesk, we have fully invested in direct sales and professional services throughout the world which is primarily why 2/3 of Bentley’s colleagues work outside the U.S.,” noted Bentley. “To augment our direct resources, during 2011 we invested in channel partner initiatives, first to recruit and empower specialist firms for incremental resources in the developed world, to assist in selling and deploying our water and wastewater modeling products in Saudi, and next to resell Bentley offerings to regional versus corporate accounts in developing economies including China. In 2011, 30% of our new license sales were attributed to channel partners. 2011 was a record year for Bentley in both R&D expenditures and we remain committed to reinvesting 20% of revenues and for total investment including acquisitions.

“Our total investment in R&D and acquisitions since the beginning of 2003 exceeds $1 billion and the main financed through internal cash flows. Along with appealing to our users and shareholders, our predictable subscription business model is attractive to lenders as well, signified by a major commercial milestone to now report.”

Bentley reported that ProjectWise is embracing a hybrid Cloud approach using Microsoft’s Azure platform. The plan is to make ProjectWise more mobile, by employing mobile apps as well as sensors and scanners.

Another important announcement which has garnered great interest from readers in the past has been the status of stock shares that were once held by Intergraph from the days when they owned half of Bentley’s MicroStation flagship product. Intergraph is now owned by Hexagon. This ended a long running litigation with Intergraph.

“At the beginning of 2011 financed the $200 million purchase of our stock from outside holders. During the course of the year since then our company repurchased about another $40 million of our stock, representing the balance of the block once owned by Intergraph and then by the private equity firms that took it private and sold it to Hexagon,” Bentley explained. “At this point the Bentley family, colleagues and former colleagues including Bentley family own 92% of the company’s equity. Last month we took advantage of a receptive bank market to complete a refinancing transaction that instituted our new $350 million credit facility through a syndicate of 11 world class banks …. By well qualifying for $100 percent bank financing rather than needing other resources, we have thus been able to reduce our financing costs with interest rates and costs locked in on the order of only 3% for the foreseeable future.”

Bentley also noted that the company has gotten back lapsed subscribers at a greater rate than ever before.

Overall, Asia was the star performing geographic region for the year, specifically China. Asia now represents 19% of overall revenue, with China’s revenue doubling every two years, whereas it was doubling every three years. China may eventually become Bentley Systems’ largest market, as it continues to spend on infrastructure for both new building as well as environmental advancements. Bentley will hold a board meeting there this year.

Europe is doing better than the U.S. market, according to Bentley. Commercial spending trends are stronger than those in the public sector, particularly in the U.S.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/03/14/bentley-systems%e2%80%99-performance-for-2011/feed/01629Top Geospatial Predictions for 2012https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/01/12/top-geospatial-predictions-for-2012/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2012/01/12/top-geospatial-predictions-for-2012/#commentsThu, 12 Jan 2012 17:50:32 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=1395When compiling this group of predictions, I looked back on what I had tagged for 2011 as predictions going forward. Some of those are still on the list, others are new.

Some from last year include the Cloud, security, and web mapping services.

Lidar Data and 3D Laser Scanning

In geospatial, Lidar data is used for terrain and flood mapping, corridor mapping and vertical information. New life is breathed into it as it is used in 3D laser scanning efforts, with point cloud processing becoming part of many important CAD programs such as those from Autodesk and Bentley.

This signals an acknowledgement of the importance of lidar data for various applications, not only for retrofit projects but also for planning and presentation value. The technology now is capable of efficiently getting the large amounts of 3D data processed accurately. With great advancements in point cloud processing, it is now being integrated into mainstream products.

Cloud

The cloud was definitely on the list for 2011, but like other technology that may be considered “disruptive,” it is still on the list. Users can now buy cloud usage using a “pay-as-you-go” model, so they can get software that way rather than buying an annual license. All your basic upgrades would come on a regular basis. The ever increasing mobility of our society is another factor that is disruptive – a lot of business can now be transacted via mobile devices and tablets using apps that can be downloaded as easily as downloading iTunes.

Those who offer cloud applications do so to extend the desktop to accomplish things with the Cloud that have not been possible using desktop applications.

James Staten of Forrester Research spoke about the cloud recently, making a case for the cloud by saying that “clouds are more secure than you are.”

His recommendations:

1. Focus – clouds can concentrate their whole security team on securing the one app.

2. Exposure – when cloud outages happens every customer gets upset and they end up in New York Times. When your email system goes down it doesn’t show up in the papers. Because of that risk those creating the cloud invest heavily in the best security minds out there. Every one of those was given a job offer by Amazon, Microsoft, etc. at very high salaries. “If anyone breaks into my account I want to know about it. The cloud is concerned with extreme audits, a security
expert, who they hire, who gets into the data center, whether they are making sure malware is up to date,” said Staten.

3.Validation

4. Multitenancy – there is far more encryption in the cloud model and it is far more difficult to see that another customer is there to alleviate concerns of privacy such as Pepsi and Coke using the same cloud service, for example.

Security

In spite of Staten’s claims, many companies are not ready to fully embrace the cloud or may want to use it only for certain things. Some customers expressed concern at the time about making available designs on the cloud. Thus, security is a big issue. At Autodesk University, IMAGINiT’s Joe Hedrick, infrastructure solutions team manager, said that although they of course support the cloud, many customers are concerned about having data on a public or external place. There is therefore an interest in having a “cloud” as an internal resource.

Enter such companies as Advance2000 which offers on-site support, systemup-time, security required, data retention and compliance required by business. “We provide all the benefits of Cloud computing without forfeiting critical business functions,” according to their brochure.

Advance2000 BIM Cloud Computing — Cloud 2.0 from Advance2000 provides high performance solution for your graphical work stations. The increased speed, as compared to traditional cloud computing, allows users to increase
productivity and better utilize valuable resources. You still get the collaborative
nature of the cloud but without the worry of the cloud crashing or your data being lost or shared incorrectly.

Those companies offering geospatial solutions will need to provide a cloud specifically for their customers, that embodies an in-house, enterprise system.
Esri, Bentley, Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Insight have their cloud offerings now but will most likely invest in the private cloud in the coming year.

Privacy is the main thrust behind the desire for in-house clouds, as opposed to the public cloud. Worldwide, it will be important to manage some aspects of business inside the enterprise and to take advantage of the fluidity and bandwidth available on the cloud.

Social Media

Which leads us into the topic of social media, without which crowdsourcing wouldn’t be possible.

Interacting in RealTime with live streaming can be about letting people be part of an instantaneous conversation. Live video and events can help businesses get
messages across.

Social media combined with location offered by the geospatial industry may be the next big thing, perhaps a sign of the times being Facebook’s acquisition of Gowalla, which allows users to share meaningful places with their friends and contacts.

3D Cities

Never is there a place where simulation and analysis can have a larger role than in 3D cities. 3D cities represent the convergence of GIS and AEC as both technologies are necessary in order to visualize the 3D city. Each major CAD technology company has a different term for their version of the vision of 3D cities – Bentley Systems has recently coined the phrase “Semantic city,” IBM
calls it a “smart city,” other companies refer to 3D cities as “intelligent cities.”

CEO of Bentley Systems Greg Bentley said noted that, “The real world is a 3D
physical world.” He brought up the equation of “GIS mapping + geospatial modeling + semantic simulation”. Semantic is the study of meaning. “The semantic city could be semantically connected together and would emphasize components and models and understand people’s behaviors,” said Bentley.

Montreal is an example of a semantic city model which is maintained in Oracle Spatial 3D.

GeoDesign is Esri’s term for the convergence of GIS and design. An Esri GeoDesign conference was just held in Redlands this past week, bringing together those in both industries to seek a better solution for combining the two technologies. It would seem from the tone of the event and from the state of the world today, that it is important for engineering and facilities management data to be accessible in GIS databases. The prevalence of building information modeling (BIM) makes it possible to have detailed structural models of buildings, bridges and roads, which enhance the GIS database that may be used in 3D city planning.

Whatever moniker the 3D city model takes on, it is able to include a lot of information pertinent to the city including site conditions, weather, terrain, and other data. This great assemblance of data can be the blueprint for the new city or the complete map of the old city – a vital tool in the asset management, maintenance and operations of the city that may be accessed by everyone who has a stake in its future.

Open Source

Some years ago, a few European countries had attempted to enforce Open Source for their geospatial technology offerings, trying to cut costs and the reliance on traditional software providers on a national level. Since the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency has expressed interest in moving to Open Source, the OpenGeo may be ramping up its presence to engage more players.

Web Mapping Services

Last year I listed OpenStreetMap and how earthmine had provided plugins for
Esri’s ArcGIS Online to integrate with OpenStreetMap, which provides street
level panoramic content. OpenStreetMap is an open map program not aimed
specifically at the GIS community, but at the world community at large.

At the time I noted that earthmine has the same model as ArcGIS Online: a central data repository with ecosystems of client applications that allow you to pull data and use them in menus and different ways such as from ArcPad and iPhones.

An Esri partner, earthmine is a 3D mapping company with a 3D mapping system
that employs stereophotogrammetric cameras, and some core technology which was licensed from the NASA jet propulsion labs and was used in the Mars exploration vehicle, Rover.

The ability to edit web maps such as those offered by OpenStreetMap is offered in ArcGIS Editor for Open Street Map which had been in beta until recently. Using this with existing enterprise scale tools could change the way business is done in large government institutions and corporations. ArcGIS Online map services have been available for free and can be used to make web maps with ArcGIS Online.

Web maps can also utilize ArcGIS 9.3 Service Pack 1, ArcGIS 9.3.1, ArcGIS 10, and ArcGIS Web Mapping APIs. There is now an earthmine coverage map for data available via the earthmine Cloud web service. Earthmine also announced an integration with Autodesk Map 3D last summer, allowing for mapping of large scale infrastructure with just a click.